In fact, whatever the actual cause, we can conclude that Fr Kenyon chose to become a Catholic priest, a field for which he was clearly unsuited for a range of reasons beyond any specific one, and he put his family at high and unnecessary risk by doing so. My sympathy and prayers go out to all his relatives, his wife, and his children. I'll discuss the responsibility of other parties below.
But let's give the known circumstances the most innocent possible reading (although a juror isn't necessarily called to do this; jurors have to ascertain the reading they can agree on beyond a reasonable doubt). The reasons Fr Kenyon left Calgary earlier this year aren't clear, but the public version is that they were at least vaguely family-related. My regular correspondent commented,
I don't think "family reasons" was cited as a cause of the departure from Calgary. Fr Kenyon just pointed out that his parents and three siblings all lived in the Manchester area. This was interpreted by some commenters as a statement that he was needed to look after elderly parents or something of that sort but he never said that. My personal guess was that he wanted his kids to get an experience of living in England and spending time with that side of the family. He took his younger son there for March Break this year.So maybe he was homesick for England, and maybe he was concerned that his kids weren't growing up sufficiently English (leaving aside whatever that means). So he decided to relocate them to Stockport, prevailing on his bishop to find him a different appointment and prevail on the Bishop of Shrewsbury to empty an otherwise occupied rectory so he and his family could relocate to a parish there. But after a matter of weeks, he decides, as far as we can tell, that Shrewsbury was still not English enough for his family, since he cites them specifically this time as a reason for leaving the parish so quickly. According to my regular correspondent, though, Mrs Kenyon hails from Idaho, so I'm not sure if even she was a judge of Englishness. (However, his farewell letter clearly indicates he expects to pursue a continued career as a Catholic priest in "pastures new".)
OK. We have the recent testimony of Msgr Kurzaj, appointed parish administrator of Our Lady of the Atonement by Abp Garcia-Siller, that a diocesan priest goes where his bishop sends him, and it didn't sound as if he wanted that job at OLA. But he went and did his best at it. We have the ancient examples of St Paul, St James the Great, and St Thomas the Apostle, who died many miles from their native places. We have Luke 9:59-61:
59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”For some reason, Bp Lopes seems to have found an overriding need to accommodate Fr Kenyon's family issues. Again, I doubt if it was family issues that actually led to the Stockport calamity, bad as it must be for the Kenyon family. I suspect it's a bigger calamity for Bp Lopes and the whole Anglican ecumenism project. We're looking at a very clear situation where accommodating a priest's family was beyond inconvenient, it created a situation that was completely unnecessary. I would venture that the UK bishops have their own lines of communication to the Holy See and through it the CDF, and this business can't be good for Bp Lopes's career.
Another issue is whether the OCSP ever had a competent vocations director, or whether Fr Kenyon ever had competent supervision. There was an issue, whatever it was, that was serious enough (even acknowledging that wanting his kids to speak more like Mancunians could, at least in some universe, be a serious matter) to force him out of Calgary. Somehow, Fr Kenyon's superiors seem to have thought the best way to handle it would be to pack him off where nobody would notice, because whatever the actual problem, they were incapable of dealing with it themselves.
My wife, reading yesterday's post, said at best, this is a powerful argument for clerical celibacy. Clearly it's an issue in OCSP, as it was in the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the Phillips family, that wives and children of priests become little groups of hostages that prevent normal imposition of clerical discipline. But I'm starting to see shortcomings in Bp Lopes that go beyond even these constraints.
